Monday, May 20, 2013

Real Persecuted Christians

Moss

Author Candida Moss, a professor at the University of Notre Dame
and a Catholic, has detailed the history of Christian persecution in the early
years of the faith in a new book that points out much of it never happened.

In the The Myth of Persecution: How Early
Christians Invented A Story of Martyrdom, she notes that “the prosecution
of Christians was rare, and the persecution of Christians was limited to no
more than a handful of years.”

Her thesis is not
going over well with such pundits as Bill O’Reilly and others who insist
Christians are being persecuted today and have been from the beginning.

The truth can have an unsettling effect on lots of people.

Herodotus

Unfortunately, much of
what we think about the past is facile and wrong.In many ways, that’s understandable.Early people didn’t have our concept of
history.They didn’t necessarily draw on
sources or any kind of research.Herodotus,
the “father” of history, simply wrote down what people told him.He was often skeptical, but he recorded the
data anyway.

Other historians didn’t
identify sources.Still others had
hidden agendas that warped their accounts.Most early historians were sponsored; their books often
constituted key components of public relations’ campaigns.

Just
because someone wrote about Julius Caesar, for example, does not mean that the
information is an accurate biography of the famed Roman leader.Caesar’s own books on the wars in Gaul are not
completely truthful.They were intended as propaganda,
written to boost his status.

Multiple accounts that
have survived often contradict each other.An historian has to choose the most plausible and compare facts with
material uncovered from the correct time period.

In truth, much of what
we know about the past can only be drawn from inferences.That’s particularly true in time periods when
historical documentation is nonexistent.There may only be a few ruined buildings still around, but little else.Fortunately, modern technology combined with
known facts have helped clarify otherwise murky situations.

Nevertheless, historians
and archaeologists try to be very careful when they find something to avoid
sensationalist claims. The general public has less control.So an old home near the Sea of Galilee

Peter's home?

was
introduced as the Apostle Peter’s resident because it is located near where he
supposedly lived and includes a cross etched into the wall.

Now, it’s a site often
visited by pilgrims to the Holy Land.It
could be just a house.It could be an
early Church building; it could be Peter’s house.Or, it could be just a home where someone
etched a cross into the wall.After all,
there may never have been an Apostle Peter, who appears only in the New
Testament.

We may never know the truth.

Some things have been
figured out.The story of the Tower of
Babel in the Bible is fiction.It was
created around a real tower to eviscerate claims that the massive ziggurat in
Babylon was the “gateway to heaven” as Babylonians claimed.The writers of the Bible assigned that title
to Jerusalem and so wanted to ridicule the Babylonian belief.

Ancient holy city of Shechem

They promoted
Jerusalem in another way, by debasing claims of the rival northern city of Shechem.The writers went so far as to change the name
in the text of Shechem’s founder, Gershom, the son of Moses.The authors of the Bible didn’t want Shechem
so elevated, so added a letter to convert the name Moses into Manassas.

There are many more examples like that.

However, that kind of
history doesn’t go well with pious readers.So, they don’t bother to read farther into the background research on
the scriptures.They accept the loud pronouncements
of so-called experts who have their own agenda.People who believe are more willing to open their purses.Give to stop the centuries of persecution,
even if there never was much.Give to
make sure people follow Jesus, even if he wouldn’t recognize anything said
today in his name.Give to support
efforts to find Noah’s Ark, even if the story is a myth, and there is no ark on
any mountain.

Ironically, realists today are the ones being persecuted – by "true believers" refusing to face reality as carefully and accurately delineated by modern
scholarship.

Long-time
religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious
history.He also speaks at various religious
organizations throughout Florida.You
can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.He is the author of the famed Unauthorized
Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel
Writers Get Their Information; Noel:
The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols;and Dummies Guide to Comparative
Religion.His books are available on Amazon.com,
Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.He can also be followed on Twitter.

You
can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at
http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1

About Me

During his career, Bill has been a newspaper reporter, magazine writer/editor, advertising copywriter and writer/editor of NASCAR programs, among other jobs. He has won three international awards for stories and programs while working for International Speedway Corp. and was named 2000 Florida Feature Writer of the Year.
He has published four books to date and his writing has appeared in hundreds of local, regional, state and national publications.